Nuggets Coach George Karl on Carmelo Anthony: “I’m sure he was tired of me.”

It shows just as clearly through a television screen as it does in person.

The fist pumps, the high-fives.

The smiles.

“I don’t know if I’d seen George smile in a couple of months,” said guard Ty Lawson of his coach, George Karl. “It’s a good feeling for everybody. If your coach is happy you’re all going to be happy.”

Karl is happy. As happy as he’s ever been as coach of the Nuggets, and he knows that a big reason for that has been the Carmelo Anthony trade, which changed the face of his basketball team.

“Part of the business is when you’re with a guy for six, seven years you get a little tired of each other,” Karl said. “I’m sure he was tired of me.”

The truth of the matter is the Feb. 21 trade that sent Anthony – then a lifelong Nugget – to the Knicks, has been good for both teams. The Knicks are 5-3 since the trade and Anthony was again up to his old tricks with a game-winning shot against Memphis on Wednesday. The Nuggets are 5-2 since the trade and play a team brand of basketball closer to what Karl had always envisioned.

“Our choice, everybody in the organization felt we knew we had to move,” Karl said. “(Nuggets executives) Masai (Ujiri) and Josh (Kroenke) have found an escape from the situation that we can reinvent the team very quickly, and it’s my job to try to do that in the next 20-something games.

“The thing about coaching is on the day of games is it’s never personal,” Karl said. “It’s ‘how in the heck are we going to win?’ I think players sometimes make it more personal. If you guarantee me that we’re going to win I’ll play you 48 minutes. But that’s not the guarantees we get as coaches, and so there are choices and there’s decisions and there’s play-calling and there’s strategy and there’s options.”

The Nuggets are trying to catch Oklahoma City for the Northwest Division title as they play the part of playoff party crashers. A lack of star power had them removed from TNT’s broadcast of tonight’s game against Phoenix, but has in some ways made the Nuggets a more solid – and dangerous – team going forward.

The ability to coach without stress has been good for Karl, who is coaching his first full season after a difficult battle against throat/neck cancer last season.

“This year, for me, the process of taking care of my life is always going to be kind of the priority,” Karl said. “The situation of five or six months of extra stress or extra analysis and extra interpretation I think was…I don’t think I ever got out of control, but I can’t deny that it got tedious.”

Has this been the wackiest season he’s ever seen in his 22-plus years of coaching?

“I don’t know about wackiest, but it’s unique,” Karl said. “There’s no experiences that I can recall with all of the stuff around it. From LeBron and free agency to franchise tag, it actually to me got to be a little bit too much. Because there’s no answers; the answers aren’t going to come until a year from now or two years from now.

“I thank Masai and Josh for the excitement that we now can maybe still have a good year this year, and maybe a really good year. At the end of this year if we make the playoffs, steal a first round and play well you might put great on that. For me, the development of a great program, an excellent program and a program of winning is kind of my criteria. I know that nobody thinks we’re going to win a championship with this team, but all I want is come May or June people look at this team and say ‘They’re not that far away.’”

And for the critics who doubt what the Nuggets can be this season, Karl bristles.

“I’ve always kind of liked the opportunity when people don’t think you’re any good,” he said. “I like to seize that. ‘What the heck do you know? You don’t know.’ And I think we’re on that stage right now. The fun series would be the Knicks against us in seven games. That would be the fun series.”

Ujiri getting back to scouting roots

Nuggets executive vice president of basketball operations, Masai Ujiri, cut his teeth in the NBA as a scout, most notably with the Nuggets. It’s an aspect of NBA life that he loves, and he’s been able to continue to do a sizeable amount of scouting college players even through all of the issues and turmoil of the Nuggets season, his first in his position.

Ujiri continues to get out and watch college games this week as he plans on making the rounds to a couple of the conference tournaments this week. Reports out of New York have noted a large number of NBA general managers attending the Big East Conference tournament at Madison Square Garden.

Gallinari feeling at home?

In the weeks leading up to Carmelo Anthony’s trade, there was a growing (mainly talk-radio) conversation on Denver’s appeal to athletes who are not from the area – more specifically those from bigger cities.

Danilo Gallinari is a native of Sant’Angelo Lodigiano, Italy (not a big city). He lived his first two and a half seasons in the NBA in New York, a huge metropolis that boasts a sizeable Italian community. And though some have said that may be an issue for him in Denver, Gallinari quickly puts a stop to that.

“I’m not worried about that,” Gallinari said. “It’s not a big deal for me to not have an Italian community here. I’ve been living by myself since I was 14 years old, I’ve changed a lot of cities. So I don’t have problems with that myself.”

And what did the Nuggets do, upon his arrival, to help him feel comfortable?

“They gave me the names of a couple of Italian restaurants,” he said, smiling.

Al Harrington not worried about Gallinari issue

Three months before the arrival of Gallinari to the Nuggets, a transaction that Al Harrington – or anyone else – did not know would happen at the time, the former Knick hinted that the Italian’s presence caused some tension in the locker room.

“He’s definitely getting a fair opportunity to be what they want him to be,” Harrington told the N.Y. Daily News, while adding he was always on Gallinari’s side. Still, Harrington sensed that while Gallinari was one of Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni’s guys, he was not. And that stung.

Asked if he was concerned about any kind of a repeat in how his playing time is handled now that Gallinari and Wilson Chandler are back with him with the Nuggets, Harrington shook his head.

“At this point in my life I’m beyond that,” Harrington said. “I just want to win. So whatever it takes to win, I’m down with. And we’ll handle all the rest of that stuff, I guess if it’s a problem, in the summertime.”

Harrington has struggled this season. Injuries initially set him back, but he says those are behind him for the most part. Harrington has gone eight straight games without scoring in double figures and has just three such efforts in his last 17 contests. He made only five of his last 18 shots in his last four games.

“My only injuries are my hands,” Harrington said. “I have jammed fingers and my thumb, but the rest of my body is pretty good. I’m a rhythm player. Sometimes it’s hard for me to get into a rhythm out there. I wouldn’t blame health. But I’m just going to keep plugging away, keep fighting because I know what kind of player I am. And I know I’m much better than what I’m showing right now.”

What does Kendrick Perkins contract mean for Nene?

Despite some of the doom-and-gloom regarding Nene’s desire to have a contract extension and some dissatisfaction with the Nuggets organization, there is almost no chance he’ll end up anywhere else. He wants to stay with the Nuggets, as he’s told The Post on numerous occasions, and the smart money is on the Nuggets doing everything they can to extend their starting center.

But what kind of contract would Nene command? A peek at Kendrick Perkins contract with Oklahoma City is a good start. Perkins is a starting center in the NBA and just inked a four-year, $36 million contract with the Thunder. Nene is making over $11 million this season. The best bet says that even with a new collective bargaining agreement Nene should command right round $10 million a season.

He’s currently enjoying his best season in the NBA with averages of 15.0 points and 7.3 rebounds, while leading the NBA in shooting percentage at 62.6 percent. Nene, whose first child with his wife Lauren is due in June, has a package of size and skill that is not easily found in the NBA, and the Nuggets want to keep that in powder blue.

Chris Dempsey arrived at The Denver Post in Dec. 2003 after seven years at the Boulder Daily Camera, where he primarily covered the University of Colorado football and men's basketball teams. A University of Colorado-Boulder alumnus, Dempsey covers the Nuggets and also chips in on college sports.